Tuesday, 15 March 2016

Professor Richard Dawkins, and ex-chief-Orthodox Rabbi Jonathan Sacks are of similar age, social background, class and education: but the first is an atheist and the second an observant, conservative Jew.

How can we concisely summarise the difference between them, in terms of reproductive success or evolutionary viability; as individuals representative of atheism and traditionalist, patriarchal religion?

Three marriages and one child versus one marriage and three children.

That's it in a nutshell! (And consistent-with a large mass of demographic data.)

Secular liberalism is biologically maladaptive; but (some) religions are - even in the modern world, and among the intellectual elite - the only known antidote to slow extinction of the human species.